Hundreds in detention attempt self-harm

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ALMOST 900 asylum seekers have tried to deliberately harm themselves while in Australian immigration detention centres over the past three years, according to documents obtained under freedom of information.

About one in 20 detainees incarcerated during this period had tried to harm themselves in acts including attempted suicide, self-mutilation and voluntary starvation, the documents, provided by the Immigration Department, reveal.

The statistics show that 474 detainees were involved in self-harm attempts at the Baxter detention centre in South Australia, 149 at Villawood in Sydney and 24 at Maribyrnong in Melbourne.

Between June 2003 and June 2004 alone, 305 detainees tried to harm themselves at Baxter.

Earlier this year a bipartisan parliamentary committee found conditions at Baxter were not conducive to good mental health, with more than a fifth of detainees on tranquillisers and antidepressants.

When the migration committee, chaired by Liberal MP Don Randall, visited Baxter in April, more than 50 of the 240 detainees were on anti-depressants and many slept for long periods during the day.

The Palmer Inquiry into the wrongful detention of Cornelia Rau also found mental health care at Baxter was inadequate by any standards.

Rural Australians for Refugees spokesman John Highfield said he believed self-harming in detention centres would be much higher than the figures showed.

Last week three asylum seekers were admitted to hospital. Two were Bangladeshis, following a hunger strike at Villawood. The third, Peter Jackson Mode, a Zimbabwean at Baxter, was rushed to hospital on September 10, after slashing his wrists with broken glass.

Mr Highfield said that most detainees' mental health started to deteriorate after about eight months. "We've known children who put nooses around their necks — children rarely do those sorts of things," he said.

Jon Jureidini, who has psychiatrically assessed about 50 Baxter detainees, said he also believed the figures could be higher. "Self-harm is universal in the population I've seen," said Dr Jureidini, head of psychological medicine at Adelaide's Women's and Children's hospital.

"I don't think I've seen anybody over the age of 11 who hasn't harmed themselves in some way." He said examples included self-cutting, starvation, drinking poisons and overdoses.

"It's a worrying level of self-harm for a population we have no reason to believe brought psychiatric disturbances into detention," he said. "The primary problem is that it is an environment that drives people mad."

Author and academic Denise Leith, who received the FoI documents last week almost a year after she lodged the request, said she became alarmed about the high level of self-harm after becoming involved inPEN, an international organisation that campaigns to free writers from detention.

According to the FoI documents, the Immigration Department defines self-harm as: "a self-inflicted injury or the act of causing harm to oneself, such as attempts and acts of cutting the body, voluntary starvation etc".

"For the past three years there have been 506 incident reports of attempted or actual self-harm involving 878 detainees."

The Immigration Department says that detainees who harm themselves are given medical assistance as soon as possible and follow-up treatment.

Meanwhile, the Nationals' federal council yesterday urged a detention policy that shortened the length of time people spent in detention and sped up the processing of their applications.

And Afghan President Hamid Karzai yesterday said he disagreed with Australia's policy of mandatory detention for asylum seekers. "As a policy of course we oppose (it). It is not right," Mr Karzai told ABC Radio.

With MICHELLE GRATTAN

THE CASUALTY LIST

Detainees involved in attempted or actual self-harm between July 2002 and June 2005: